[EQ] Future Global Shocks: Pandemics

Future Global Shocks: Pandemics

Harvey Rubin, University of Pennsylvania

OECD/IFP Project on Future Global Shocks - IFP/WKP/FGS(2011)2

Available online PDF [87p.] at: http://bit.ly/fua7Zy

 

“”…..Classifying pandemics as a Future Global Shock is consistent with considering certain aspects of public health and infectious diseases as “existential threats” to human security as described in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of 1994 and reaffirmed in the 2003 UN Commission on Human Security.

 

The UNDP conceptualizes security as human-centric rather than the traditional state-centric and includes protection from the shocks that affect human safety and welfare, such as disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards.

 

The consequence of such a definition, as Ole Weaver points out (Weaver 2009) is, “... that action according to the normal procedures will not be able to offset this in time, and therefore extraordinary measures are both needed and justified.” In this formulation, the nature of an existential threat depends in part on the particular threatened sector.

 

In considering the traditional national security threat, the survival of the sovereignty, territory and physical condition of the nation is at stake; to the environmental community, the sustainability of an ecosystem is at risk; to the economic sector, survival includes protecting the means of production.

 

To the medical community in general and especially to the public health and infectious diseases sectors, survival under a pandemic global shock clearly refers to taking every action to minimize morbidity and mortality as well as to minimize the effect of the pandemic on the economic, social and political stability of communities, nations and transnational organizations.

 

In this view, analyzing a pandemic future global shock must be informed by its effect on a broad range of key resources and critical infrastructure. Therefore, we argue that the global shock to public health in the form of a pandemic is unique among global shocks in having profound positive and negative externalities and interdependencies….

            Content

i.Introduction:

ii. How 2009 H1N1 emerged

iii. Are there existing management structures that help prepare, mitigate and respond in the event of a pandemic?

iv. What is the state of the art regarding risk analysis, potential impacts, existing models?

v. Risk assessment part 1:

vi. Risk assessment part 2: vulnerability and loss: how likely is a pandemic global shock and what could be the economic consequences?

vii. Research recommendation: designing the optimal strategy for risk communication –finding trust in informed leadership and the crowd.

VIII. Lessons from other outbreaks:

The Global HIV/AIDS Pandemic

SARS

IX. The knock-on effect of antibiotic resistance.

Who Suffers?

What is being done? Antibacterial agents

X. Lessons learned concerning control points:
     increasing societal resilience while maximizing resources prior to, during and after a pandemic. a proposed solution to the problem

x. Lessons learned concerning control points:
    increasing societal resilience while maximizing resources prior to, during and after a pandemic. a proposed solution to the problem

xi. An integrated approach to the problem

xii. lessons from the past

Recommendations

References .

 

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